A little (www) Story

In 1995, JF and I started a little company – Netdiver. It’s original mission was to uncover and report on the economic possibilities of the emerging www.

ndlr: JF & I in pixel regalia presenting a new logo. Still love it (/him too).

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We were going to ‘dive’ to fetch the pearls – in opposition to ‘surf’ – which was then buzz word du jour.

We thought it pretty clever.

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Remember vividly my awe upon ‘entering’ the infant web – wow – we are now connected to the world! To this day – still awed.

First search was this single word: Idea.

Landed on TWChiatDay – Idea Factory which posited on a ‘new’ approach on how to run a creative studio – horizontal instead of hierarchial.

The interior ‘spaces’ were amazing – and have now become the norm for all those Silicon Valley giants and startups: funky offices – team pods – free food – game – flexible hours, etc.

Exactly what I was envisioning.

I concluded – if there’s one maybe there’s hundreds??

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ndlr: Netdiver site banner circa ’99. Diving not surfing ;))

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I remember the early www to be barely above double-digits millions. The web was ‘small’ and somewhat.. uh.. intimate.

I theorized ‘freelancing’ to become the economic norm – clients to be landed anywhere in the world and the ‘disenfranchising’ of selling both creative skills and goods to be possible.

At long last – designers could change the world with ‘communication’, ‘exchange’ and ‘collaboration. The circulation of new ideas to be unbelievably faster than pre-Internet since new ideas always reached ‘culture’ – post-mortem for authors.

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Followed 3 intensive years of stealth research gazing / gauging the ‘opportunities’ that would be afforded creatives types when they would settle in the then land of MiS, technologists and scientists.

I was mind-mapping infinite files to locate like-minded people who – as us – were exploring and building what today has become such a commodity – although an irreplaceable one as that.

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In ’98, I decided to ‘share’ the results of the ‘likeminded’ research – aka bookmarks with small screencaps – our visual trademark 200 x 115 pixels and a bit of text to describe it.

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Vox pop (2)

So much of this resonates with me. I often get nostalgic about the days of the “small” web and am grateful for your link archive of many of my favorite sites :). Looking forward to future freshness and more vintage treasures.